Braun: Occupy Wall Street began as a message and grew into a movement

Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-LedgerMembers of the protest Occupy Wall Street start to meet up with a Union member rally in Foley Square after marching north from Zuccotti Park.

NEW YORK — Ariana Paoletti climbed to the top of the federal courthouse stairs to get a better view, but still found herself behind people carrying signs, blocking the scene below. Then she saw it and gasped, "Oh, my God.’’ Below her were far more people than she ever expected — thousands and thousands.

The New York artist and DJ wasn’t alone. Somehow, a small band of mostly young people with virtually no experience in politics — and even less love for the trade — had put together an anti-Wall Street protest that drew more than 10,000 students, union members, community advocates, and just plain people whose fear and resentment of economic disparity found a voice in a movement called "Occupy Wall Street."

"They have fanned the flame of democracy," says Susan Fulwiler, who grew up in South Plainfield. She works for an international organization, and her father was a toll collector for the New Jersey Turnpike. "They have the right message."

The odd, non-organized yet tightly self-controlled organization "didn’t vary from the message we have conveyed since the beginning — the broad sense that people are frustrated by the unfairness of economic inequality," says Tyler Combelic, one of the organizers of the group.

"People just couldn’t get away from the idea that we were just a small group of disaffected young people who couldn’t pull this off."

Occupy Wall Street movement grows as thousands march in New YorkThousands marched in New York City, from Zucotti Park to Foley Square, in protest of unfairness in the U.S. economy on Wednesday. The march was part of the growing movement, Occupy Wall Street, which began in September and has now spread across the country to numerous cities including Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington D.C. In New Jersey, protests have been planned in Jersey City and Trenton. (Video by Adya Beasley / The Star-Ledger)

But even Combelic, a New York web designer, conceded he was surprised by the magnitude of Occupy Wall Street’s ability to draw organizations and people to its cause. "Yes," he said, "there was a lot of people.’’ He estimated the crowd at 15,000.

Skeptics could hardly be blamed. When the morning dawned Wednesday, fewer than 500 people — almost all of them young — stirred underneath tarpaulins and sleeping bags in Zuccotti Park, across from the World Trade Center site.

But as the day wore on, the park filled with people — maybe 2,000 by the time of their scheduled march to Foley Square where they were to join a union rally. In the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan, it was difficult to judge just how many people left jobs and other obligations to register their unhappiness with how money is distributed in this country.

Warily viewed by a patient police force, the group began the 10-block trek to Foley Square shortly after 3, without a permit to march. Even when they filed into the massive courthouse square, the size of the protest wasn’t clear. But they just kept coming — students from Columbia, the City University of New York, Juilliard, New York University. Unions representing transit workers, municipal employees, teamsters, pipe fitters, nurses, teachers, electrical workers.

New demonstrators were still filing into the court complex when the rally ended.

And union members were surprised at the ability of Occupy Wall Street to bring them all together.

"This could be the pivotal point, the time when things begin to change," said Bob Broadhurst, an unemployed member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers from Boston. "And they did it."

Broadhurst said he believed the anti-Wall Street sentiment could attract mass appeal and lead to change "if someone could come up with the bodies to put on the street — and this group has done it."

The only disruption came at the end of the demonstration, when a group of marchers tried to cross a police line near the Stock Exchange. Police used pepper spray to deter them. About 20 people were arrested — it appeared they wanted to be.

Shanae Barnes, a nurse from Chicago, was as stunned as Ariana Paoletti at the size of the protest. "Our union told us there was this group that was organizing things, but we had no idea they’d be so good at it."

The protest was not only larger than expected, it was orderly and coordinated. Occupy Wall Street’s organizers kept the group on sidewalks once it began its march north on Broadway, eager to avoid last Saturday’s mass arrests when, according to New York City police, demonstrators illegally crossed into the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested — a blow that did manage to bring public attention to the group.

It was just as calm and controlled on its return to Zuccotti Square after the march.

And it isn’t over. Combelic said there no plans to abandon the park first occupied Sept. 17. Activists have been showing solidarity, holding protests in other cities across the country, including Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and even Boise, Idaho. Protests are also being held on college campuses. Hundreds of students walked out of classes in New York, some in a show of support for the Wall Street movement.